


The Red Threads

by Shannon-Kind (Shannon_Kind)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, High School, Universe Alteration, University
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-16 05:08:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10564260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shannon_Kind/pseuds/Shannon-Kind
Summary: Under Maura Leahy’s guidance as a Man of Letters, Lilian O’Grady was the best hunter in County Limerick, until she came to her mentor’s home to find Maura and her husband Padraic dead on the floor, spell ingredients spent on the table, and their infant daughter, Eileen crying in her crib.Determined not to raise the child in a world of monsters, Lilian takes Eileen across the Atlantic to the United States, where she grows up in a small town.Lilian could not know that hunters would find Eileen, sooner rather than later. And where there are hunters, there are also monsters…





	1. Eileen

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [AnonAnton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAnton/pseuds/AnonAnton) and [Braezenkitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/braezenkitty/pseuds/braezenkitty) for their help and support in really sprucing this up and getting it ready to read for you guys.
> 
> Also, to [poD7et](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poD7et) for random questions in the middle of the night.
> 
> Section break art by [AnonAnton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAnton/pseuds/AnonAnton)
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** No one involved in the creation of this fic is d/Deaf/hoh. Any errors due to lack of research are my own, excepting Eileen's scary-good speech reading, which comes straight from canon.

 

“Oh my god! You want me to knock his head in for you?”

“No!” Eileen Leahy insisted, walking away from her best friend to continue toward their high school.

Millie Baker stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, but Eileen steadfastly refused to look. Millie reached around her, making Eileen see her hands and read the sign language, insisting, _“Jack is an ass. I know you don’t need me to fight your battles for you, but I’m there for you, whatever you need.”_

Eileen rolled her eyes, giving in and paying attention to her friend. She looked so slight against the long street they walked down every day, her pixie cut, blond hair perfectly steady despite the breeze whipping up their jackets. “Jack has been an ass since 3rd grade,” Eileen replied with a frustrated sigh. “It’s not going to change. And yeah, it sucks that he keeps telling the vice principal that it’s not fair that I get special treatment, but—”

Millie cut her off, signing while speaking to emphasize her words. _“You don’t get special treatment. They even the playing field for you. And you’re still kicking ass. So if you need me to, I’ll kick his.”_

Eileen had no doubt she would, but she’d been dealing with this as longs as she could remember. She’d lost most of her hearing when she was less than a year old, and while the hearing aids helped, she was still profoundly deaf. There were always going to be kids, and adults, who treated her differently. If they didn’t harass her for being deaf, then they’d bully her for being an immigrant, or for living with her Aunt Lily, since the unlikely virus that took her hearing stole her parents as well. But Aunt Lily was teaching her to fight for herself, physically if need be. And it’s not like she didn’t have a fighting spirit after all those years of dealing with Jack and his friends anyway. It didn’t help that after all her aunt’s training, her biggest fear, if she ever did let those guys truly get to her, was that she’d really end up hurting them.

 

_“I’m glad you’re on my side, Millie,”_ Eileen said, happy for the chance to use ASL with her friend. It was pure coincidence that Millie’s grandmother, who often babysat for Millie, had been born deaf, so both Millie and her mother had some knowledge of ASL. _“I have a feeling if I had to fight you, I’d lose every time.”_

She saw the smile lighting her friend’s face before she turned and made her way to the school building. It made the little white lie worth it.

 

Eileen’s head hit the desk with a thud, her long, dark wavy flowing over the sides. Trust Mr. Acerbi to knock the dial on the FM transceiver and change the channel halfway through one of his mind numbing history lectures. The rest of her teachers weren’t so terrible, but Mr. Acerbi was frankly ridiculous. He hardly ever bothered to make sure the system was “beeped in” to the same frequency as her hearing aids before he started talking, and he was always hitting the tuning dial. He didn’t even try to face the class while he spoke either; turning away to talk and make notes on the huge white board. Which would be fine, if it wasn’t just topic headings he was writing up there.

At this point, she had no idea what he was talking about. There were just a list of dates from the 1800s on the board. He had definitely been talking about the Louisiana Purchase before the sound cut out, but now? The war of 1812? Aaron Burr? The Civil War? She had no idea!

She glanced up, a little relieved to see that the rest of the class were just as lost as she was. A few had their heads together, their mouths moving in a rapid-fire whisper. Most of them were just staring blankly ahead, somewhere past the white board. Even the new kid, something Winchester, who just yesterday was raising his hand and seemed to know every answer, had his head down in defeat.

The bell rang. At least _that_ she can hear over the otherwise impenetrable background noise coming through the hearing aids. Finally, lunch.

Of course, it would be just her luck that while she tried to put everything in her backpack she would knock her pencil off the desk. It was too far to reach, that much was obvious. So she took a second to try to knock it closer with her foot, but the toe of her shoe hit it too soon and it skittered across the floor and over to the windows. Resigned, she waited for the rest of the class to go past. If she waited to stop at her locker until after lunch, she would still have time to buy her food and actually get to sit and eat with some of her friends. And at least then she could avoid getting her fingers crushed.

After the stampede she grabbed her pencil and turned around to a pretty much empty classroom. Even Mr. Acerbi had already hightailed it out of there. But the new kid was still laying over the desk. “Hey, new kid,” she said. It sounded loud to her, but he didn’t move. As she came closer, she noticed that he was really kind of cute, despite the drool. His brown hair was maybe shoulder length, so it wasn’t quite as long as some of the other guys’ in school, but there was something about it. She almost wanted to call it shaggy. In the quiet of the room, she could hear when a snore broke through his parted lips. She shook her head gently, chastising herself for getting distracted. “Hey! Come on, it’s lunch!”

He was still snoring. It wasn’t like he was in study hall where you had to stay silent and still or risk detention. Why would he want to miss lunch? “Sleep through your classes, don’t sleep through lunch.” She reached out to shake him by the arm, and tried not to notice the way his muscles felt firm under the soft gray hoodie. “Wake up!” she insisted again.

His whole body jumped at that, and Eileen pulled her hand away. “Stop yelling! I’m trying to sleep.” The classroom was quiet enough that she understand most of the words, even though he wasn’t at the best angle for speech reading. He swatted at the disruption blindly, his fingers landing in Eileen’s hair. How had he even reached her without sitting up? His long fingers flexed in her hair and his eyebrows knitted together in a confused frown. One eye opened, and his hand pulled away slowly. “You’re not Dean.” Eileen watched his hand retreat, surprised that she suddenly felt she was missing out on something.

“No. And we’re _going_ to be late for lunch if you don’t move,” Eileen replied, trying to hold back laughter. Those long fingers of his drew down his face, wiping away the sleep from his eyes and the last of the drool. And those eyes! They were such a strange color, not quite gray or green or blue, and she hated to pull her gaze away before she figured it out. He mumbled something as he turned away to pack up his backpack. “What did you say?”

When he met her eyes, there was that all too familiar dawn of realization. “You’re deaf.”

Eileen gasped and clutched at her chest in horror. “I am? Thank goodness you told me!”

“No, I just…I mean… sorry. I was complaining about boring classes and late nights. I…did you hear that? Should I speak slower or louder or something? I’ve never done this before.”

Eileen shifted her weight, picking absently at the hem of her shirt. It was always kind of awkward when someone made a big deal out of her being deaf, but at least this guy was being polite. She took pity on him and changed the subject. “Do you want to have lunch with us?”

“Oh, I…” he shrank back a little in his chair and shifted his gaze toward the front of the room, making it harder to make out what he was trying to say, but a pink blush warmed his face. “…don’t have my lunch today.” He looked down, maybe embarrassed, before stifling a yawn, but at least he was already finished talking so it didn’t affect her understanding.

“I won’t let you starve, new kid. Let’s get something to eat.”

She made to leave, but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, and she turned back around. “My name’s not ‘new kid,’” he said emphatically. Wow, hit a nerve or what? “It’s Sam.”

“You coming or not, Sam?” With another yawn, followed by an adorable smile to beg her forgiveness, he unfolded himself from the desk. Her jaw dropped as she looked up at the boy, now towering over her. She caught herself and closed her mouth.

“Yeah, I’m coming, Pancake.”

Eileen stared, did he just say… “Pancake?” she asked slowly, trying out the word.

He grinned, despite looking like his eyes were still trying to close on him. Looking straight at her and speaking as clearly as he could, he said “You’re kind of a short stack compared to me.”

Eileen’s neck was cricked at an odd angle just to look up at him. “Everyone’s a ‘short stack,’ compared to you!” she fired back.

“See?” he smiled. “You can’t even deny it.” He nodded, decided, before meeting her eyes and repeating it, “Pancake.” Eileen turned, making sure he saw her disgruntled expression, and huffed out of the classroom, whether he was following or not. At least this way, he wouldn’t see the gleam of humor she knew was trying to spread across her face.

 

After giving Sam her cash, Eileen charged her lunch and led him to an out of the way table on the edge of the cafeteria. It was still pretty loud; she could practically feel the sound bouncing off the walls, an almost unintelligible garble thrumming through her hearing aids. 

She’d hardly had a chance to sit down and nod to Millie across the table when Sam flopped in the seat next to her, digging into the salad and the fruit parfait thing he’d ordered. He was practically shoveling the food into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten since he’d moved in… weird. She startled when he looked up and caught her eye, looking a little irritated. She hadn’t even aware that she was staring.

An unexpected tap on the shoulder from across the table made her look up, hoping desperately that her blush didn’t show. She followed the arm to Millie, but instead of speaking, she signed, looking at Sam with a gleam in her eye. _“He’s cute!”_

Eileen glanced up at Sam, then looked back at Millie with a smile. _“I know.”_

_“I’m calling dibs right now,”_ Millie said, bouncing her eyebrows.

Eileen arched her brow. _“I thought you didn’t like them tall.”_

_“I can always make an exception,”_ she smirked. “He’s talking to you,” Millie said, switching from sign to speech and rolling her eyes.

Eileen looked at Sam, his mouth still moving. “I didn’t hear you. It’s too loud in here.”

Millie tapped her on the shoulder, making sure she had both Sam’s and Eileen’s attention before explaining, “The hearing aids amplify all the sound, not just the people she wants to hear. Like me.” Eileen shook her head fondly. Millie always had her back, and tried to never leave her out of the conversation.

A movement out of the corner of her eye brought Eileen’s attention back to Sam, reaching into his backpack under the table and rummaging around. He pulled out a pen and notebook. “Sorry if I embarrassed you in front of your friends,” he wrote. “We don’t get a lot of fresh fruit and stuff at home. I like it.”

Embarassed? She frowned—what did he mean? And then she remembered how hungry he’d seemed. Well, that was just too good an opportunity to pass up. A crafty smile curled Eileen’s lips. “Just for that,” she wrote back, “I’m making you pay for lunch.” She looked up, just in time to see his smile vanish and his face go pale. “Tutoring!” she exclaimed out loud. 

His face relaxed instantly, and he bumped into her with his shoulder, making her smile. He said something—she could kind of hear it and could see his mouth moving—but he was looking at the table, blushing a little. When he looked up to notice her brow creased in confusion, he took the pen out of her hands, his fingers brushing lightly over hers for maybe a second too long. “That I can afford. What do you need?”

She grabbed the pen back and started to scribble. In a few seconds there was already half a page of her scrawled frustration about history. Then suddenly, she stopped. Looking up at Sam, she said “You slept through class. You can’t help.” 

He shrugged and made sure she was looking directly at him before speaking. “I did Pre-Civil War in my last school. I can probably catch you up.”

_“Thanks, Goliath,”_ she said, hardly realizing that she was signing both the ‘thank you’ and ‘giant’ while she spoke. He blushed at the first part, but looked confused when she continued.

“What was that?” he asked, eying her hand.

_“ASL”_ she told him, signing and speaking at the same time. _“I’m talking.”_

Despite the fact that while sitting their height difference was less pronounced, when he shot her a _look_ —face scrunched up kind of pissed—she felt tiny. “I figured that,” he said. “And I know at least enough to say thank you. What was the second part?”

Movement from Millie caught her eye before she could respond. She was doubled over in laughter. _“She called you a giant!”_

Eileen scowled, but didn’t try to take it back. After a second, Sam tapped her on the shoulder, tentatively. “Was that okay? Touching you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Of course.”

He nodded, thoughtfully. “Will you teach me some signs?” 

“I suppose.”

She caught the half-evil smirk on his face right before he asked, “Will you teach me to say Pancake?”

Laughing, she said and signed _“Earn it.”_

He smiled back at her, his eyes wider and brighter than they were before he ate. “All right,” he said. “Will you teach me how to ask someone for their name.”

She nodded, signing _name,_ then pointing at him. Then he tried—each hand made the right shape, but he twisted his wrists so that his palms were touching. Without even thinking about it, she reached out and quickly pulled his hands down onto the table. “That was not name!” she said, wide-eyed and insistent. 

“What did I say?” he asked, shocked and surprised, glancing down at their hands, still entwined on the table. 

She could feel the jolt through the table when Millie slapped it, and looked up, pretending not to notice that Sam’s hands were still warm under her own. “If she’d have let you finish, you’d have been asking one of us for sex.” Sam pulled his hands out from under hers at that, hiding them under the table.

Eager to change the subject, she pushed the notebook in front of him. He read over her written questions, answering them, but too ashamed to ask her to sign anything again.

She looked away the next time he smiled at her, gathering her courage before meeting his eyes again. “Can we work together after school?”

“I…uh…” he stammered and mumbled, making it hard to understand. Then, suddenly realizing, he grabbed up the pen again. “I would like to, but I have to work.”

“Work? You just moved here!” After all that and he was just going to lie to get out of hanging out with her?

He put down the pen, his face fighting through several emotions. “I don’t mean…” she watched him say. Then, his face resigned, he said, “My dad has some stuff he wants me to do.”

“So…chores,” she said scoffing. “You have chores.”

He blushed, but his smile came back, even if it wasn’t as bright as before. “Yeah.”

“But saying you have work sounds so much cooler,” she joked, smirking at him. 

It’s like the air in the room suddenly felt lighter when he smiled back at her, looking up with an exaggerated frown. “Yeah.” His nose wrinkled, and God, it was adorable.

A gross, boiled green bean hit Eileen from across the table. She looked up to see Millie staring daggers at her. _“You two get a room,”_ she signed, smirking, and making sure that Eileen could see she was speaking out loud for Sam’s benefit too.

Eileen seethed in uneasiness. Clearly she needed better friends.

 

Aunt Lilly probably wouldn’t be home for at least four hours, so Eileen had some time to kill before going home. Stopping only to get a couple packages of peanut butter crackers and a Gatorade from creepy Mr. Fremont at the 7-Eleven, she walked the four blocks to the library. There were a couple of tables in the back that they almost never checked, and if she didn’t cause any trouble and cleaned up, most of the staff would let her snack. And if they gave her a hard time, she’d just pretend that she couldn’t understand them.

A shaggy mop of brown hair bent over thick stacks of books stopped her in her tracks. “Goliath?” she asked, frustrated. Sure enough, Sam’s head snapped up.

“Uh, hey.” He closed the book quickly and tried to hide it under a pile, but not before Eileen noticed the title, “The Minotaur and Other Myths of Ancient Greece.”

“This is chores?” she asked, hoping that the hurt didn’t show in her voice. Blowing her off to look up monsters? Yeah right. Awesome.

She’d really thought Sam wasn’t the same kind of asshole she’d known her whole life. For forty minutes she had been charmed, and spent the rest of the day believing she’d actually met another person who wouldn’t give a damn that she was deaf. That he would bother trying to get to know her for herself. Millie could damn well keep her dibs.

On second thought, Millie would be the first in line to kick this guy’s butt for her. At least that thought calmed her down a little.

“Well, I mean, it’s homework, and you know, it’s just…” Every instinct in Eileen’s body was screaming for her to turn away and leave this jerk alone, but she waited. “You’re distracting,” he finally said.

Scoffing and frustrated, Eileen bit out “I’m sorry you’re so distracted by people who are different. I know the whole world should look and sound and act the same for you, but it doesn’t work like that.”

“What? No! I mean…that came out wrong, I mean _you’re_ distracting, Eileen.” He paused, shaking his head, his eyes pleading like a lost puppy. “You,” he insisted. “You’re smart and funny, and if my dad didn’t need me for this, I would have jumped at the chance to study with you, I mean it.” His hands were buried in his thick hair.

“Distracting you from the Minotaur? I didn’t know we had a class in Greek Myths now.” She still sounded stung. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to forgive him, to believe that he could be a friend, but he’d lied to her!

“It’s not what it looks like,” he said. What was it even supposed to look like? His eyebrows drew low and close together, and a blush tried to creep up into his cheeks. “I, uh…” he struggled, and it was all Eileen could do not to make it easier for him, until she remembered that he blew her off! “It’s for my dad.”

“Your dad wants to know about monsters?” she asked, not believing a word.

“He… he’s a writer. Like, about fighting all different kinds of monsters? So, he has me do research.” He glanced at the books, his open hand gesturing over them. “It’s…important.”

“Why can’t he do his own research?” Until she felt her hand on the hard back of the chair next to Sam’s, Eileen hadn’t even realized she’d moved. Somehow, she’d made it completely around the table. She dropped her hand.

“Sometimes he just needs to know right away,” he insisted. “If he had to stop and research it could be bad. Real bad…” He paused, his blush deepening before he stuttered out, “Writer’s block, you know?”

She didn’t, but maybe it didn’t matter right now anyway, so she nodded. “It’s not that embarrassing, Goliath. You could have told me you were helping your dad. It’s kind of…loyal.”

“Yeah?”

Eileen got a good look at the ceiling while she rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah,” she said, signing the word sharply to give it some attitude.

By some miracle, Sam waited until she was focused on his face again, before asking “You going to sit, Pancake?”

“Well,” she said, enjoying the sarcasm, “I wouldn’t want to interrupt your research.” She sat anyway. She was invited, after all. “Of course, you could just stitch red thread through your clothes, but where’s the fun in that?”

The table shook under her hand like it had been hit, but she didn’t notice him drop anything. She looked down, trying to find the source, but his hand on her shoulder pulled her gaze up again. “What do you mean, red thread?”

She shrugged and resisted rolling her eyes again. He looked so insistent about this silly book. “It’s some kind of old wives’ tale. Aunt Lilly still makes us do it for luck,” she said, showing him the two red stitches running perpendicular across the hem of her shirt. “My mom believed in the Tarbhfear, a half bull from Ireland that would be born whenever there was a new king. You’re always supposed to have red on you to keep them away.” She paused for a second. “If your dad uses that in his book, I want credit.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Maybe anyone else would have taken him at his word, but she could see the sadness in his eyes behind the smile. She let it go. People didn’t usually like to be called on things like that, she’d learned.

Eileen pulled out her homework, and after a surreptitious glance around to make sure there were no adults to rat them out, her contraband snacks as well. “Have I read any of your dad’s stuff? It sounds interesting.”

Sam looked at the pile of books in front of him, and mumbled something.

“What did you say?”

His eyes shot back up, and she could almost see his brain registering and logging the faux pas. “No, he hasn’t published anything.”

She shrugged, glad that he didn’t just tell her it wasn’t important, like so many people in her life. “I’ll keep an eye out, then.” For a while, both of them were absorbed in their work, sneaking covert glances at the other, until she noticed that his eyes kept skittering back to her snacks. She gave him a second pack from the recesses of her backpack. When she met his eyes, they were hesitant, but she just pushed the food closer. He smiled, and despite her best effort, something inside her melted. His hand brushed hers on the table and she felt the breath catch in her chest. She hoped the blush wouldn’t show.

“Thanks, Pancake.” She could read his speech but the hearing aids didn’t pick it up. Maybe he whispered, or maybe it was all for her. He looked away when she didn’t answer, but bumped gently into her shoulder with his own.

“Eh…” she said before rallying. “If I share, you might help me when I get stuck?” 

He looked up at her, his smile brighter than it had been since lunch. For the next three hours, they sat side by side, working and chatting quietly. There was something calm about the way the back of his hand gently brushed hers, she didn’t want to move. It made writing and turning pages difficult, but it was so completely worth it.

 

At the start of fifth period the next day, Eileen slid into the seat next to Sam. His face totally lit up. He reached out to squeeze her hand, and she kind of hoped no one noticed, for his sake at least. At the same time, part of her hoped that everyone saw that the new kid thought she was worth something.

The first time Mr. Acerbi asked a question, his microphone working properly for once, she kept her hand down. Nothing would ever make her raise her hand in that stupid class, even if it was something she and Sam went over at the library the night before. She sneaked a glance at him, grinning cheekily. His hand had been up the whole time, and he started glaring at her, not amused. Oh well.

“Ow!” She looked down at her foot. Clearly Goliath had some long damned legs, to be stepping on her foot from the next aisle over. Not willing to let him get away with it, she raised her hand to smack him in the head, just as a dry “Ms. Leahy,” crackled through the aged address system. 

A self-satisfied smirk plastered itself on Sam’s face, and if all the eyes in the classroom weren’t probably waiting on her to answer, she would definitely have tried to smack it off. Instead, she answered the question, hoping that the frustration came through in her voice. Mr. Acerbi dismissed her and turned to look around the class, and she let herself catch Sam’s gaze. His smirk fell into a genuine smile, and his multi-colored eyes (they looked mostly green with just a hint of honey brown this time) got all soft. Despite herself, Eileen smiled back, even if it was just secure in the knowledge that he would be getting his ass kicked for this at lunch.

 

It had been almost two weeks since Sam Winchester came to school, and Millie wouldn’t shut up about how disgustingly cute Sam and Eileen were together. Not to mention the bonus that Eileen was finally going to pull a passing grade in Mr. Acerbi’s class. Aunt Lilly would be proud.

Not that there was any truth behind Millie’s teasing, unfortunately. Sam was definitely a friend. A good friend. A friend that sometimes held her hand under the table and… oh who was she kidding? One of them would have to work up the courage sooner or later and ask the other out. Until then, she looked forward to studying with him in the library after school, even if he seemed to spend more time researching his father’s book than he did on school work. 

So when Eileen turned the last corner on Tuesday, the sight of Sam standing outside, instead of at their usual table in the back, pulled her up short. His eyes darted to her, and she could see his body sag in relief when he saw her, even from that distance.

She sped up her walk. His eyes darted past her to the parking lot and street beyond, and there was something subtly wrong about the way he stood. He looked older, alert, and tense, and she increased her pace again, matching his urgency.

“Goliath,” she said, her breath coming in shallow pants even though she regularly ran two miles a day with her Aunt Lilly. This was barely half a block, but Sam’s expression had her panicked.

Muscled arms pulled her in close, the scent of Axe Apollo tickled her nose. She wrapped herself around him, fingers curling into his jacket, feeling the tension in his body. Soothingly, she rubbed her hands up and down his back. She wanted to look at him, talk to him, to find out what was wrong, but he held her too tight to move.

He relaxed, but only the tiniest bit. His head shifted, and she could feel the whisper of a touch as Sam kissed the top of her dark hair. Why did her first kiss have to come in a moment of pain? Part of her rebelled, but she stayed calm, determined to help in whatever way she could. 

Reluctantly she pulled away to study his face. “Sam, what’s wrong?” she whispered, purposefully using his real name. Instead of answering, his hug pulled her back in, tighter this time. “Sam?” she repeated, the concern and anxiety bleeding into her voice.

When he let her go, a look of pure devastation flashed across his face before it settled again, resigned. He smiled, but her stomach twisted, and not in the good way. It was all wrong. That wasn’t Goliath’s smile at all. “Unpublished writers don’t make enough money to feed two growing boys.” It was so matter of fact, it might as well have been rehearsed. His eyes didn’t meet hers. “My dad takes side jobs. He finished here. We’re moving on.”

“Goliath, no!” Half of his mouth lifted, but there was no smile in it, not really. Something behind her pulled his attention, and she turned to see what his eyes had been tracking. A black and evil monstrosity of a car pulled up to the curb, inches from her feet. There was a bang from inside, harsh and ringing through her hearing aids. “Let’s go Sam,” and something difficult to make out about a job some states over.

The solid reassurance of Sam’s familiar hand covered her shoulder and spun her back around to face him, with almost no effort. She stared up at him, silent, and it was just a second or two of weighted tension before he was leaning into her, sneaking quickly into her space for a kiss.

Her mind spun in circles. A kiss. An honest to God kiss. Her first kiss. And it was a goodbye.

“Nice moves, Sammy!” someone jeered in the background, or maybe that wasn’t it at all. She ignored it.

Sam pulled away gently, just far enough to cup Eileen’s face in his hand. _“Be good, Pancake,”_ he said softly, stiltedly signing the words she had never taught him. When and where had he learned? Her hands tangled in his jacket, like she could somehow keep him there. A big thumb wiped away a tear she didn’t know had fallen. She could feel the weight of his head resting on the top of hers, and she didn’t want to pull away, but when another series of yells came from that horrible car, he pulled away again, his hand rubbing over the red stitches at the hem of her shirt. With his other hand, he pulled her face up to be sure she was looking. “Stay lucky,” he said, his eyebrows raised, his face so sincere and insistent.

And then her arms were empty and that terrible machine growled down the street with Goliath in the back, watching her through the windshield. He got smaller and smaller, and then he was gone.

She wished it would rain… but the damned sun refused to hide. Eileen stood there, tears leaking from her eyes, at the entrance to the library, her fingers picking angrily at the two little unassuming red stitches in her shirt. When they finally frayed enough that she could pull them out, the sun was long gone, and she realized with a start that her Aunt Lilly would be looking for her, worried, probably. 

She started walking, dropping the thread behind her to fall where it may.

Clearly, it had never work as advertised.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several years after meeting Eileen Leahy for the first time while his father was working a Minotaur case, Sam and Dean get caught up in a similar case on a college campus in Montana. But it isn’t just the monster that feels familiar.

“I set the depth guide, but you’re gonna’ want to be careful anyway,” rumbled Bobby’s coarse baritone.

Sam sat in an old folding chair, watching Dean grab the Dremel from Bobby’s hands. The chord trailed over the chipped and stained concrete that served as the floor of Bobby’s workshop. “I got it, Old Man.”

Sam cradled his right wrist closer to his body. “You sure you don’t want to let Bobby do it? Or wait until tomorrow? You’ve been driving for almost twenty four hours.”

Dean scoffed. “We got a motel after we crossed into Ohio. Put your arm on the table, Sammy.”

If anything, Sam pulled his fiberglass cast closer. “Yeah, and then you drove twelve hours straight. You only slept for five at the motel! Just let Bobby do this.”

“What’s wrong, McFly? Chicken?”

“Dean, that’s not…”

“Just put your hand up there, son, and let him cut the cast off,” Bobby said, exasperation dripping from his tone. “He ain’t gonna cut your damn arm off. If you don’t get yourself out of that wet thing you’ll end up with necrosis.”

Sam put his hand up on the workbench, palm down. He still didn’t see why Bobby couldn’t be the one working the saw, but he might as well keep his mouth shut. Awkward plastic safety goggles covered his eyes, and Dean pulled down his own before powering up the rotary saw. The scream of the motor jarred his senses, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to watch or look away as Dean brought the spinning blade closer to his skin. The smell of the resin invaded Sam’s nose, and he fought back a cough so it wouldn’t shake his hand. It felt like forever, but it was probably only about a minute before Dean finished cutting through the one side of the cast. 

He saw Dean motion for him to turn his hand over and complied, lying it palm up so that Dean could cut along the second side. The smell was really bothering him, and he wished he had thought to ask Bobby for a mask. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose to try to breathe through the material. The tool powered down, the whining of the blade fading as it slowed. Sam breathed easier, the relief of not having the saw so close to his skin pouring off his body. “You got those pliers?” Dean asked Bobby. 

“Do I look like your damned scrub nurse?” Bobby asked, unplugging the Dremel and wrapping the cord. “It’s on the bench. Your arms ain’t broke, unless I missed something.” 

The edge of the pliers slid in between the two halves of the cast, and Dean spread them. The cracking noise was a little surprising, considering they’d already cut through all the solid stuff, but all Sam could feel was blessed cool air running over his skin for the first time in months. Dean popped open the other incision the same way, and then the cast was off. Bobby stepped up and grabbed Sam’s arm in his calloused hands, rotating it this way and that in the light. “You’ll be alright. Go clean up, and make sure you dry it good!”

 

Clean and surprisingly refreshed after his shower, Sam followed the only light still burning in Bobby’s house to the old man’s study. It was surprisingly quiet in there, until he saw Dean dead asleep on the couch against the wall. Something shot past Sam’s head, and he raised a hand to grab it out of the air.

“Put that on your bad hand, ‘s an ancient Egyptian secret.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, impressed, but not terribly surprised that Bobby had something that could help him. He nodded his thanks and took a closer look at the small glass jar. “Bobby, this is aloe,” he said, deadpan. “The plastic wrapping’s still on it.”

The old man looked up from the book he was bent over, taking notes into a small ledger next to it. “You think the Egyptians didn’t know what aloe was good for? Besides, it ain’t some mystic spell ingredient that’s got to be collected at midnight on a new moon by a virgin. You don’t want to use it, don’t. Don’t say I never did anything for you, ya idjit.”

“I…no thanks,” Sam said, breaking the seal and putting a thin layer of the cream everywhere that had been covered by the cast. “So what’s this about a case?”

“You really think we should wake up Sleeping Beauty here?” 

Sam looked down at Dean’s sleeping form, his arms curled around a pillow. “You think I can sleep through you two yappin like a pair of old biddies?” Dean asked without opening his eyes.

“Well then get your ass up off my couch and give us a hand here,” Bobby said, flipping through his note pad. Dean sat up, but didn’t get off the couch. Crossing the room, Sam leaned over Bobby’s desk to get a look at his papers. “Buddy of mine, out in Liberty County, Montana’s been compiling reports for a while about kids going missing from one of their college campuses.”

Sam shrugged, heading back to join Dean on the couch. “Yeah, but kids drop out of college all the time. I mean, I just up and left in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, and that’s what he thought too—why he didn’t contact me until now. But there’s a pattern; September through December, then they get a break, and again February through April. Two kids each of those months, boy and a girl.”

“That’s what,” Dean said, leaning forward, “fourteen kids a year?” Bobby nodded.

“I don’t know about fourteen,” said Sam slowly, “but that’s seven boys and seven girls. Seven has some pretty strong occult significance. Seven sacrifices could theoretically be used in spells to dispel magical illusions, or—”

“Yeah, but if they were some kind of ritual sacrifice, it would have to be all at the same time, wouldn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. It could be compounded every month.”

Bobby shook his head. “You’re going about this all wrong. It could be spell work, sure. But not with that break in the middle.”

“Yeah, but that’s when kids are out of school,” Sam observed. “Maybe it’s a student, or a teacher who lives somewhere else when school isn’t in session.”

“And if it was, you think they’d need the power for their finals in December, but not the ones in May?” As always, Bobby cut to the heart of the matter. Sam was speechless. He looked at Dean who just shrugged. “No, this is something that’s feeding on these kids when they’re around. And considering it still has a pretty varied menu come May, I’m thinking it’s something specific that feeds on exactly seven men and seven women every year. Now you two idjits wouldn’t happen to know of anything like that?”

Something tickled at the back of his mind. A library like every other one he’d been in, except this time he hadn’t been sitting alone. Piles of books on Greek mythology sat in front of him—the minotaur. “Shit,” he hissed, remembering that it took his father almost two weeks to take the last one out. Dean nodded along, presumably coming to the same conclusion, huffing out a wide-eyed breath.

“Yeah,” said Bobby, “you got that right.”

“Wait a minute,” Dean said, and when Sam looked over he saw the distrust written on his face. “How come your buddy gave you this information? He’s right there.”

“Ethan’s a good guy, and a good hunter. Probably one of the best trackers out there. But he doesn’t take on anything more intelligent than an Shunka Warak’in, maybe an occasional Thunderbird.”

“A what now?” asked Dean.

Sam rolled his eyes and started to explain. “Thunderbirds are a-”

“Dude, I know what a Thunderbird is, that’s plain English. What are those War Kin things?”

“Dog botherers mostly,” Bobby said dryly. “Although they’ll take out livestock and the occasional hiker. Ethan thinks they’re related to the chupacabra, and are probably the spawn of Hellhounds and coyotes. Damned if I know.

“But,” he continued, “he called me just after the last kid was taken, on the fifteenth. If this thing keeps its pattern, it’ll take another on the twenty-fifth…” he let his sentence trail off.

It hung in the air, dire and desperate. The twenty fifth of April, just three days away. And even with Dean behind the wheel, it would take a whole day to drive out there. “And that’s our last chance until September,” Sam finished the chilling thought.

 

The sky was the piercing blue of early afternoon when Dean pulled up in front of the fraternity house. Through the passenger window, Sam looked at the building, a faded ΔYΔ on the sign above the door. It wasn’t that the brick building was particularly imposing on its own, but something about it drew Sam’s chest up tight. It had been more than a year since he’d set foot on a college campus, back before— Well. Back.

“You coming?” Dean was already out of the car, striding confidently to the sidewalk and pulling a little flip notebook from the pocket of his jeans. According to Ethan, the last kid to go missing lived here; Mike Tanner. It seemed as good as any place to start looking. Sam got out of the car and followed Dean up to the door. Years of training had him evaluating his surroundings, looking for points of ambush, exits, improvisational weapons, all while he waited for someone to answer Dean’s insistent knock.

A dark haired kid—although if Sam was honest, he wasn’t much younger than himself really, just so much more innocent—answered the door. “You here with the pizza?”

“Oh awesome. We’re having pizza?” Dean asked in a ringing, upbeat voice, pushing his way into the building. “You hear that Sammy? They sure know how to treat a guy at Delta Upsilon Delta. I knew we made the right choice. These guys are gonna be the best.”

The young man looked like he wanted to block Sam’s way, even though Dean was already in the house, but one glance up—and up some more—had him thinking better of physically blocking the path. “What’s going on?” he sputtered out.

“They didn’t tell you?” Sam asked, acting mildly affronted.

“Who? Tell me what?”

“The national board. For Delta Upsilon Delta,” said Sam, taking in the messy—but all things considered—not actually that gross, main room.

“The emergency membership drive…” prompted Dean.

“Oh you mean that business with Mike and Jorge and Brett and Nico all dropping out since break?”

Now that was news. Sam exchanged a look with Dean. If that was true…were all the missing students, or at least all the missing boys, from Delta Upsilon Delta? What were the odds of that?

Dean raised his eyebrows, frowning, and Sam knew he’d put it together just as quickly. “Exactly,” he said, turning back to their host and effortlessly switching into a good ol’ college boy persona he was trying to project. “We’re your new pledges. I’m Dean, and this is Sam.”

Sam nodded when the kid turned to look at him, but he was looking more critically at the house now. Something wasn’t right.

“I’m Brock,” he said, sounding a little unsure about introducing himself. “But I haven’t heard anything about new pledges. We had a rush way back in January. Not that many guys showed up. Even the freshmen think we’re cursed.”

Something was definitely wrong with this place. Sam couldn’t quite figure it. But he’d been to a couple of frat parties back in his Stanford days; Brady had been a member of Delta Beta Lambda, and he’d spent many noisy afternoons there, completely unable to study.

“Why do they think that?” Dean asked, frowning slightly as he stopped drumming his fingers on the railing, rubbing them together to clear something, Sam couldn’t tell what, from them.

Before Brock could answer, it clicked. “Where is everyone else?” Sam wondered, feeling suspicious.

Brock shrugged. “Jay’s in class. Roberto’s got work. It’s just us now. Delta Upsilon has the highest dropout rate in the whole school. Well, us and Beta Chi Nu, our sister sorority.” The kid turned back to Dean, and Sam took the time to really look around. The main room was empty. The furniture was all there, and old pictures on the walls, but nothing new, no game systems or refrigerators. It was like those that were left weren’t even trying to stake a claim. “That’s why everyone thinks we’re cursed. I’m starting to believe it, too. Mike was a good guy, doing great in all his classes. He really wanted to go into medicine when he finished up here. His whole family worked in coal, you know? Dangerous shit. He was so glad to get away from that, you know?”

It took a minute for Sam to swallow back the acid that rose in his throat. He managed a dry “Yeah, I’ll bet.” It felt like the room was spinning. That poor kid, dragged away from the life he was building for himself.

“Hey now, that’s just awesome,” he could hear Dean saying, like he was a long way off. Sam sunk into the couch. “Did he leave anything to the fraternity? Because I’m looking to go pre-med too, and I’d love to see his room and his collection, if his parents or his girlfriend didn’t pick them up.”

Brock shot a look at Dean, shocked and a little disturbed. “He’s not dead. He didn’t leave anything to us, but he left most of his school stuff in his room when he left.”

Dean smiled awkwardly. “Yeah, of course. That’s what I meant. Did he leave anything **in** the fraternity?”

He was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to catch the look Brock threw at Dean before turning back to Sam. “Your friend’s a little creepy, you know?” he said. Sam just shrugged. He didn’t trust his mouth. Dean stared daggers at him, and Sam just shrugged again. He knew that look well enough. If Brock wasn’t there, Dean would be telling him to get it together. He watched as Dean and Brock walked away through the house to Mike's room. Sam finally registered how dry his throat was, the barely contained panic sitting in his chest, the sweat beading his forehead. 

Sam forced himself to calm down. He could get through this; he knew it. He closed his eyes and took two deep breaths. Leaning his heavy head against the soft, overstuffed back of the couch, he breathed again. He could do this, it was a job, like any other. He’d been doing this his whole life. No big deal. He opened his eyes. Yellow and orange fire billowed across the ceiling. Someone was screaming. 

‘Not real,’ he tried to convince himself. ‘This is not real.’ He closed his eyes again, even more tightly, blocking out the vision. When he opened them, the room was back to normal. He leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. This was **not** just another job.

 

“What the hell was wrong with you in there, man?”

Sam’s head was down, his elbows resting on his knees, fingers splayed through his hair, as the Impala rolled down the street. But he could imagine the look Dean gave him with the question. He didn’t have an answer, so he shook his head, raising it just enough to press his fingers into the sinuses next to his eyes, desperate to fight off the impending headache and nausea. He felt the car pull over, screeching to a stop on the shoulder. Dean’s stare lay heavy against his side, but Sam wasn’t ready to sit up and face him. Not yet.

“Get your shit together, Sam.” Sam nodded, he could do this, but his head was still in his hands, his eyes were still closed, fighting to keep the images of Jess burning at bay. “This is the last chance we have to get this thing before September,” Dean reminded him harshly. Sam knew that, he did. And maybe by September he’d be ready to face the bright innocent faces of students who weren’t any younger than he was, following their dreams of an apple pie life that Sam could never have. His only chance swallowed up by a search for his father and the death of his fiance. Almost fiance. 

The backhand into his arm jarred him, making him sit up. “What the hell?” he asked.

“We’ve got today to figure out how to save the next girl. That’s it. So are you with me or not? Because if I gotta do this one by myself, fine. I’ve hunted on my own before. But you gotta let me know now.” It was an out. Or at least Dean’s equivalent of one. 

‘Shit,’ Sam cursed inwardly. Maybe that’s what he needed. This whole thing was just—too much, too soon. He opened his mouth, planning to take the out Dean had offered, but something didn’t sit right. Guilt clawed into his chest. It wasn’t just leaving Dean on his own, he trusted Dean to take care of himself out there, even against **this** beast. It was the something inside him, that hidden evil thing, cackling in delight at Sam’s refusal to do the right thing. He’d held it at bay for a little while, fighting it off when he jumped into the pool to save the little girl. But how could he fight the darkness inside himself if he sat in the motel and waited for Dean to save the day? That was—it was giving in. And Sam would not give in. 

Taking a deep breath, he lifted his head. “I’m in.”

“Yeah?” Dean asked. No one else would have noticed the concern in Dean’s eyes, but Sam knew, from years of Dean making sure he had food for school and pocket money once in a while. 

“Yeah.” Dean didn’t say another word, just smiled over at him, turned the radio up, and drove on towards the sorority.

Sam hummed along to the music, trying to drown out the chatter in the back of his head. This was just a job, like any other. And Sam had been training for this his whole life.

He had almost convinced himself of it by the time they pulled up in front of the sorority house. Dean handed Sam a pin with the ΔYΔ logo on it before opening the driver side door. “Where did you get this?”

Dean shrugged. “Snagged a pair of them off one of the end tables at the Delta Upsilon house. Figured they don’t have much in the way of membership, they won’t miss ‘em. And anyway, it’ll help convince the girls.” He hit Sam in the shoulder, playfully. “College girls, Sammy,” he said with a leer.

“Don’t start, Dean.” The wink Dean gave him before opening the car door just made Sam roll his eyes even harder, but he followed his brother up to the porch anyway.

A perky brunette answered the annoyingly jaunty doorbell. “Can I help you guys?” Dean smiled at the girl, laying on the charm way too thick, but Sam could see the way she hid herself half behind the door, she wasn’t ready to trust them.

“Hi, I’m Sam and this is Dean. Brock sent us,” he said, showing her the pin. “We’re off-season pledges. We’re just supposed to come by and see if you ladies need anything. As part of our probation. If you don’t…” he tried to look as embarrassed and unassuming as possible, “I mean, if you could just give us a note or something, proving we stopped by?” He could see Dean raising an eyebrow at him, a look of frustration on his face. Sam subtly stepped on his foot. The young woman looked them over for another second, then opened the door further, revealing a sitting room. Dean shot Sam an impressed glance, but he resisted the urge to gloat.

“I’m Ashleigh. Hey. And that’s Camryn,” she said, motioning into the room where another dark haired girl was sitting watching a soap opera on a big television with some kind of rack over the top. The closed captions were on the screen, flashing along with the dialog. “Cam, these guys are pledging at Delta Upsilon, and they got sent here to help us out.”

The girl called Cam whined a little. “Berto should have called me and let me know they were coming. I could have left some laundry for you boys to do.”

“Too bad you can’t meet the Bobbsey twins, they’re up at the campus center for the day.”

“Twins?” asked Dean, perking right up. “Sammy, they’ve got twins here.” Sam raised his eyebrows, frustrated at how far off topic Dean was going.

Ashleigh laughed. “They aren’t really twins, but they’ve been friends for forever apparently. Since like preschool.”

Camryn smiled. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if we’d taken one of them into the sorority and not the other. They would have rioted.”

“Oooh, I got something you can do, Sammy,” Ashleigh said.

“It’s Sam, actually,” he tried to tell her. It didn’t look like she was listening, she was already halfway up the stairs. Sam looked at his brother, eyebrows raised. Should he follow her? Wait here? Dean shooed him toward the stairs with a subtle wave of his hand, but when Sam turned around, Ashleigh was already coming down, a flat rectangle in her hand. 

“This fell, about a month ago,” she told Sam, handing him a metal picture frame. “The solder cracked and the glass broke. I replaced the glass, and Mike said he’d put it back together, but, well, that’s before he decided to wander away in the middle of the night.”

“I got the gas soldering iron in the trunk, I can take care of that,” Dean said, showing off his keys. “Want to come see my Baby?” he asked Camryn. She giggled and followed him out of the sorority house.

Sam gazed at the photograph in his hand. There was a cheerleader style pyramid of girls, topped by… “Is that a… a bull mask?”

Ashleigh giggled and took the picture from him. “Yeah. That’s Rachel Meagher’s farm. She’s owned it for about fifteen years, she was a Beta Chi here about twenty years ago. So we… you’ll laugh,” she said, stopping short.

Sam put on his most charming smile, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Dean’s, he knew, but he could be interested and sincere. “Tell me, I promise I won’t.”

“It’s part of rush. We make the pledges meet us at the farm, tell them that they’ll be mounted by a bull before they can complete their initiation. Just to scare them a little, test their trust. And then when they get there, well… we make them carry the dog in a bull mask on their back.”

“That doesn’t sound too terrible,” Sam says consolingly. Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous, but considering what Brady implied his friends got up to… well it didn’t really seem too bad.

"That was our last big class in the pyramid. Before everyone started thinking we were a bunch of drop outs.”

“You’re not though?”

“Well, we are. I mean, I’m not, and the other three living here aren’t. But yeah, we’ve had a run of bad luck with some of our sisters. Ever since Katy Steele came and attacked us about not letting her join.”

“Oh my god, do not talk about Steele,” said Camryn, coming through the door with Dean in tow. Dean went to throw a drop cloth over the girls’ coffee table, but first he had to move a pile of…something. Camryn took them quickly like they were something important, and cradled them in her arms. Dean grabbed the frame from Ashleigh’s hands, flashing her an apologetic smile. He lit up the soldering gun to weld the corner back together.

“What are those?” Sam asked, taking a closer look at the four curved objects piled in Camryn’s arms. They looked like headsets with microphones. Come to think of it, he thought he saw… he checked again, and there were another four headsets charging on a rack above the television. “Are you guys big gamers?”

Ashleigh laughed. “Nah, one of the Bobbsey twins is hard of hearing. We use the transmitter here when we have group conversations.” 

Sam smiled. “I had a friend who was deaf once. I didn’t know they had big sets like this.”

A soft wave of nostalgia washed over him, but he fought it back. Dean hadn’t let his kiss with Eileen Leahy go for months. Dean’s voice cut through the memories. “So tell me about this Steele girl.”

Camryn rolled her eyes and groaned, but Ashleigh perked right up. “Well it was right at the end of the Beta Chi pledge period four years ago. I was still in my senior year of high school, but Cam was there, and for a while this was one of the big house stories. So this girl, Steele, had gone through the whole thing, right up to the last night, when we all get directions to the farm. Only apparently she never showed. You can see in the picture, the pyramid was uneven.”

“Chloe, my mentor for initiation, was livid,” Camryn cut in. “I swear Steele is half the reason she left.” Sam took two of the headsets that looked like they were about to topple form Camryn’s arms, and she gave him a relieved smile, shifting the others into her hands. 

Ashleigh kept talking; she seemed excited to have a new audience who was interested in her stories, stories she couldn’t usually share. “So anyway the next day Steele comes charging into the house, right up through the front door, asking when they were having the ceremony. Of course they’d already had it. So she starts storming through the place saying the Beta Chi girls set her up, and that she was there and they weren’t. From what the older members said, it was crazy.”

“I heard she dropped out of school a few months later. Got pregnant. I’ve seen her working at the bookstore, but I don’t think she’s enrolled anymore,” Camryn added, rolling her eyes.

“Done, ladies,” said Dean, standing up straight after hunching over the table. “Give it a few minutes to cool, then gigantor over there will hang it wherever for you.” 

Camryn gave the last two headsets to Ashleigh and went up to Dean, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

 

“You know,” said Dean, leaning on the roof of the car, outside the sorority, “I can kind of see why you didn’t want to leave.”

Sam stared at him, dubious. “You fixed something for her, and she kissed you on the cheek. It’s not like it’s love at first sight.”

“Doesn’t have to be, Sammy. Doesn’t have to be.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t one of us be staying with them, to make sure they’re safe tonight?”

“Well, if you want to do the legwork, I volunteer. I think Camryn and I could have some stuff to talk about. But do you really think anything is going to happen?”

“Uhm…there’s a minotaur on the loose, who apparently has it out for them and the Delta Upsilon guys. I think **maybe** one of these girls is going to get kidnapped.”

Dean rolled his eyes, his posture radiating no concern at all. “Exactly, Sam. It’s a Minotaur. It’s only been feeding for what, three years? That’s nothing. If what your new girlfriend said is right, it sounds like it’s this Steele girl’s kid. It’s not like we don’t know what we’re looking for.”

“I’m not kidding, Dean. You stay with the girls here. I’m going to go round up the other two from campus and send them back home. Then I’ll go after Katy Steele, see if she’s really the source of all this.

Dean shrugged making his way back around the car. He tossed the keys into the air where they landed neatly in Sam’s outstretched palm. “Don’t you dare scratch her.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam said with an exaggerated sigh.

Dean only got about three steps towards the front door before he turned around. “What am I going to tell them about why I came back?”

Sam felt his face tense into a frown, he looked up from under his bangs trying to think of something. “Tell them we got a text from Brock. Something to do with rush, and they want me and they’ll call you later. They asked the girls to watch you so you didn’t ruin the secret initiation rite?” He shrugged. It was a hell of a stretch, Sam knew.

“College is fucking weird, Sammy,” Dean said, turning back to where the girls waited inside.

 

Sam pulled up in front of the student center, parking in what was probably a no parking zone. If he was lucky, the center would have a phone book and he could find Steele’s address from there. If not, campus libraries stayed open late. It wouldn’t be that big a deal to make another quick stop after dropping the other two Beta Chi sisters off. He cursed himself that he didn’t catch their names. He was pretty sure he couldn’t just walk into the building and ask to be shown to the nearest Deaf girl.

On the ride over, he went over the sign language he knew in his head. There weren’t many words, but he’d picked up a smattering here and there, even took a course one semester at Stanford, although he’d forgotten most of it.

He arrived at the student center sooner than he expected, and cursed himself quietly for forgetting how centralized college campuses were, too busy remembering laughing eyes the color of liquid caramel, long brown hair, and a smug smile from years ago, all mixed in with his own college days and the draw of a course he would never use.

It was only about seven in the evening when Sam—deceptively calm—walked through the Student Center doors. Pairs and trios of chatting students wandered through the building, so insistent on their conversations they didn’t notice him. A girl was pounding on the bathroom door a little way away. A bored looking woman, too old to be a traditional student, but maybe a graduate student or older learner on a work study program drummed her fingers on the information desk. Sam’s mind swam with possibilities. This was too much, too close to his own college experience. He had to focus on the case. One thing at a time. He could search the whole building, but there was no guarantee the girls would still be there, or that he’d even recognize them. He’d only looked at the picture for a split second. For a moment his mind played with the possibility of asking the woman at the desk, but then he heard a simple pair of sentences.

“Millie, let’s go! How long does it take to use the bathroom?”

There was nothing surprising about the words, it wasn’t unusual to hear friends yelling at each other in the college center, not in his experience anyway, but something caught his attention. He couldn’t see the girl’s face from this angle, but her long brown hair was swept up in a ponytail, and the behind the ear pieces of her hearing aids were obvious from this angle, not skin toned, but colored a bright purple. He tapped her on the shoulder, mentally rehearsing how to sign the letters B, N, and X; the best English interpretations he had of the sorority’s Greek letters.

When she turned around he was caught off guard by liquid caramel eyes and a smug smile. “Eileen,” he breathed. It took a moment for his brain to catch up with his eyes, the fall of her name from his lips instinctual. “You’re one of the sisters from Beta Chi Nu?”

She looked up at him, giving a subtle nod. Her eyebrows drew close together, until her eyes widened in recognition. “Goliath?” He nodded, pleased to be remembered. “What are you doing here?”

His mind raced with the shock of seeing her again, and the worry that it would all be pulled away by this supernatural creature. “The girl in the bathroom, is she your sorority sister?”

Eileen nodded again. “Yeah. It’s Millie.”

“Listen,” Eileen raised her eyebrows, barely suppressing the urge to roll her eyes, if the tightness of her mouth was any indication. Sam shook his head and pushed on, they could deal with the slip-up later. “I was just talking to Ashleigh and Camryn, and I think you two should head home now. It’s important. Get Millie, I’ll drive you home.”

“Why would I get in the car with you? I haven’t seen you in years. I don’t even know you.”

Sam glanced worriedly between Eileen and the door, gulping dryly. “You’re right. You should probably have a friend with you. Go get Millie.” She gazed deeply into his eyes, searching for some kind of trick, before disappearing with a slam into the ladies room. 

He barely had to wait a minute before she was coming back out, a ripped red silk scarf in one hand and a well maintained pocket knife open in the other. “What is going on, Sam?” she asked. He could see from the tension in her shoulders and her stance that she knew what she was doing, and that all of her aggression was aimed at him. He had to diffuse the situation. “Millie’s gone isn’t she?”

“What did you do with Millie?”

Sam raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Nothing, I swear. Look, something’s been going after the girls from your sorority, you have to know that these kids aren’t just dropping out, right?” The hand holding the knife dropped another inch as she nodded. She didn’t put it away, but it was a start. He looked around, astounded that no one in the busy student center seemed to realize she had a weapon. It couldn’t have been normal. “Me and my brother, we’re here to help. It’s what we do. Let me take you back to your house. Dean’s there. You’ll be safe with your friends and he and I will find Millie.” His voice softened. “I remember her. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

Eileen expertly flipped the knife closed. “I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

She stepped close to him, invading his space. Even looking down at her, he felt a little intimidated by her stare. “You can take me with you, Goliath, or I can follow you. I’m going to get Millie back from whoever has been kidnapping my classmates.”

At a loss for words, he heaved out a sigh of frustration, turning on his heel to head back to the Impala. He could hear the click of her footsteps as she strode behind him, keeping up just fine despite her shorter stride. He ignored her. If the minotaur already had its victim, she should be fine, he reassured himself. 

By the time he had unlocked the door, he saw Eileen standing at the passenger door, one hand on the handle. “You can’t come,” he told her again, signing _no_ , the only negative sign he could remember off hand.

“Unlock the door or I slash a tire before you can pull away,” she said calmly.

Dean would kill him. He unlocked the door.

“Where is Millie?” she asked, easily fitting in the space next to him. And **that** was a weird thought.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What?” He looked at her. Of course, she hadn’t been able to read his lips. He repeated himself, itching to turn away and start driving already. “What do you mean you don’t know.”

“I don’t know where she is,” he said, deflating a little. What good would driving be if he didn’t know where he was headed. “I only know what took her.”

“Don’t you mean who?”

He sighed, leaning over to rest his head against the steering wheel. He could feel her gaze on him, staring through him as he gathered his thoughts. Taking a deep breath, he turned back to her. “Remember those books on mythology I used to read all the time? My dad wasn’t writing about them, he was hunting them. That Tarbhfear thing your aunt told you about? She was right, there really are minotaurs. And ghosts and demons and witches and a dozen other things. And we think one of them has your friend.” 

Eileen’s jaw twitched. She looked down at the red scarf still clutched in her hand. Her mouth opened and closed with the same token protests he had heard dozens of times in his life. “I thought they were an old wives tale. She used to tell me stories, about ghosts, and monsters, but she would always assure me they were just superstitions. For luck. Like sleeping in a salt ring or keeping a silver dagger on you,” she said, flipping open her little knife again. It was Sam’s turn to sit in shock, his mouth wide open. She looked at him steadily. “How do we find it, and how do we kill it?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting for this chapter, guys! It took me longer than I expected to publish, because after six and a half months of being unable to work due to injury, I started working full time again.
> 
> I'm still exhausted, but getting better, and very glad to be working again.
> 
> And again, thanks to [AnonAnton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAnton/pseuds/AnonAnton) and [Braezenkitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/braezenkitty/pseuds/braezenkitty) for their constant support and beta work, even when I'm sadly lacking on reciprocating.


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